Anyway, the story follows the life of Darren Swenson: a New Orleans teen who loves coding, as he goes about his life. He makes an important breakthrough, and things just evolve from there.

This is a story about growth, about how the greatest things can have the humblest of beginnings. A cliché? Perhaps. It's just a beautiful one.

Prologue

I find it funny how I used to wonder what an Artificial
Intelligence would feel like.
Would it soar through cyberspace in unparalleled freedom? Or would
it feel like a bird forever trapped in a metal cage?
I would have never guessed that one day I’d find out the answer
for myself.
We all take our steps through life, and from the time we learn how
to walk, we keep going. Yet all that walking could only lead to a
single inevitable destination: a grave.
At least that’s true for you.
I still remember taking my first step.

1 Sparks

When I was little, my mother used to tell me that the universe was
made in sparks. Would that mean that at the beginning, someone had
clacked two cosmic stones together?

***

I was flitting through the code on my screen. This damn bug was
driving me insane.
“Stack corruption.” I whispered the most dreaded words a
programmer could ever hear.
A stack corruption was a special kind of bug. Somewhere along the
line, the program had overwritten a small piece of memory, a tiny
piece, but it was located on the stack, and that changed everything.
I clicked through the corrupt stack trace in my debugger, trying
to find the culprit. No use.
The stack was the map with which a program could tell where it had
been and what it had been doing. There was no telling how badly a
program would misbehave after overwriting part of the stack, and you
know what the worst part is? That kind of bug gets the debugger
itself confused.
I sighed and shut down my debugger, it would have to wait.
I checked my email. Nothing yet.
I should have received the message by now. I was starting to get
worried. Did it lose power? Was the process interrupted somehow?
What’s with the delay?
I checked the estimated completion time on my phone again and
realised it was two minutes past the original estimate. I had to go
check it myself.
I got up, turned off the computer, and left the library.

***

My name is Darren Swenson, and I’m seventeen years
old.

The year is 2022, and last week, I finished writing the first
Structural Molecular Compiler.

The SMC was a piece of computer software. A suite of
compiler programs. Only it didn’t compile code into computer
programs. It compiled code into complex molecular machines, simply
known as nanobots. It compiled from a new programming language I’d
invented specifically for this purpose.

The language was called C@ – pronounced ‘cat’ –
and it was weird. It certainly looked like C++, but had its own
idioms and special keywords for automata.

It was hard work, and the compiler was very slow. It
had to account for millions of atoms interacting simultaneously
within a molecule, and produce something meaningful out of the code
it was fed. It would take days to compile anything of moderate
complexity.

At the moment, I was having it compile my second
invention, it was a mere 12,382 lines of C@ code, but when passed
through the compiler, it produced a peculiar piece of nano-machinery:
the Structural Molecular Assembler. I won’t get into its function
right now, but if you’ve studied biology, the best analogue for it
is a Ribosome on crack.

I entered the basement.

***

Designing those things wasn’t easy. It took me two
years and a lot of unrelenting work. I had to study so many things in
so many fields, I think it’d be fair if I’d turned into a raving
lunatic in the process.

What made it ironic was that I was somewhat of a
failure at school. History, geography, languages, crafts, and art
weren’t on my list of interesting subjects. Well, maybe geography
and crafts were mildly interesting.

As I walked into the basement, I could smell
something in the air. Something was wrong.

I turned on the lights and went to my terminal, I
woke it up from standby and signed in.

“Oh shit!” “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

My compile farm had crashed.

I’d made it using old computers. Instead of using a
single computer for my work, I figured a long time ago that it was
much more efficient to network many cheaper computers into a cluster.
Well, in terms of cost versus performance that is. But my father had
told me not to worry about the power consumption. “Son, you let me
worry about that. You do your thing.” he had said, but I’d still
contributed through my freelance work online.

Well, now that it had crashed, I was having second
thoughts. All of that for nothing!

I ran a diagnostics routine and found 3 unresponsive
nodes. I spent two hours figuring out what went wrong.

I disconnected the nodes and started the process all
over again. I lowered the processing priority. It would take longer,
but it would mean less heat.

There we go again, two weeks down the drain.

It’s not like I could use the schematic yet anyway,
I still had a stack corruption bug to overcome.

***

“Hey Kat.” I greeted Katherine as I walked
through the living room on my way to the kitchen.

“Hey.” she said without looking back from the TV.

“What are you watching?” I asked.

“Just one of my stupid soap operas.” she said
nonchalantly.

“Is it any good?”

“Not particularly.”

“All right, good talk.”

“Yeah.”

I stepped into the kitchen and fixed myself something
to eat, then went upstairs into my room.

It was time to fix this bug, once and for all. I
delved in with all I had.

***

It took me a month to fix all bugs and finish my
tool. A whole damn month.

Thankfully, it was over. The compiler was finished
processing the schematic for the assembler as well.

The problem with the schematics that my compiler
generated was that, to build them, you’d need an assembler.

Since the schematic for the assembler was generated
by the compiler, you’d need an assembler to assemble one. A
chicken-egg situation.

When confronted with this problem, I decided to
cheat. Why not have something that already builds molecular machinery
do my work for me?

That’s why I wrote the RNA converter, and now I had
a working converter and something to convert.

The RNA converter was a one-time-use tool at this
stage of my plan. I would use it on the schematic for the Structural
Molecular Assembler to convert it into something organic. Something
that a common bacterium could understand.

Something tangible.

I ran the converter and waited for several days, once
finished, I went online and made my order with a gene synthesis
company. Commercial DNA synthesis services were readily available
since the early 2000s. It was cheaper nowadays, thankfully.

It cost me my allowance for almost a year. The RNA
strand was huge. No way around that. There was just no way to
optimise it further when forced to use a biological Ribosome as my
medium.

Now it was time to wait for the bacteria to arrive. I
opened up my code editor and toyed with some ideas. I was preparing
for the next step.

***

Two days later, I got the call.

“Hello?”

“Hello, this is Dr. Patrick from Triple Helix. May
I speak to Mr. Swenson, please?”

DNA synthesis labs would only call you if something
went wrong, and something going wrong meant that they’d run the
strand against common and dangerous viral sequences and thought you
were attempting to synthesise a bioweapon of sorts. I didn’t want
to get my father involved and I certainly didn’t want a visit from
homeland security. My heart skipped a beat, but I kept my composure.

“This is Darren. How can I help you?”

An awkward moment of silence passed as Dr. Patrick
overcame his shock at the voice of a teenager greeting him.

“Um. Well, Mr. Swenson. We just ran the sequence you submitted
against our early detection database.” his voice sounded perplexed.
Just what I thought.

“Anything I should be worried about?”

“Oh no, no, nothing like that. It’s just… the
strand is unique. I know this might come off as unprofessional, but
my colleagues and I were just wondering why it looks like nothing
we’ve ever seen, and the structure is almost…”

I could hear whispers around him, and he tried to block the
microphone. I heard some scrambling and a new voice took over.

“What the hell are you trying to do, son?” a
gruff voice asked.

“Just a science project, sir.” I replied.

“Should we be worried, anything we need to report?”
the voice asked.

“No sir, it’s just a hobbyist project.”

“That’s a damn big project, I’ll tell you
that.”

“I appreciate your discretion.” I said calmly.

He sighed and handed the phone back to Dr. Patrick,
who promptly apologised and ended the call.

I sat there, smiling, and visibly shaking.

***

I think that the ‘unprofessional’ phone call paid
off in the end. Because I got my package only something short of a
month later. That must have been their way of apologising. They must
have bumped me up the processing queue. Well, it was either that or
they hadn’t been getting a lot of work lately.

The day the package arrived, I was haunched over the
computer in my room reviewing some simulations.

Dad called from downstairs, and said there was a
delivery for me. I lurched in excitement and went to receive it.

I talked to the delivery man and signed the papers,
then moved the box to the basement, which I’d partially converted
into something resembling a makeshift cleanroom in anticipation of
this moment.

I deposited the bacterial culture into the incubator
and adjusted its parameters. It would take one day for the culture to
grow.

It was time to move my development computer down
here, so I went upstairs.

“Hey son, what’s the latest? Did you get it?”
my father was asking about the package.

“Yes, dad. It’s already incubating.”

“All right. Now prove that it actually works and
I’ll personally clean your room for a month.” he said with a
smirk.

“A challenge! Now I definitely will.” I said with
determination and a smile. “Could you help me move my computer
downstairs?”

“Oh no, I have work to do. You take care of that.”
he said as he picked up his briefcase and headed for the door.

“All right, dad. Thanks anyway. Good luck at work!”
I said as I strode towards the stairs.

“I guess I won’t be moving the desk downstairs.”
I murmured to myself.

***

A day later, I had the first organic Structural Molecular
Assembler. Now let’s talk about its function.

Think of it as the offspring of a Rubik’s cube
mating with a Swiss army knife.

The Structural Molecular Assembler does absolutely nothing, until
it’s fed with a radio signal.

Once it confirms its transponder ID, it starts
decoding the payload, which – as you might have guessed – is the
same format that the Structural Molecular Compiler produced. Once it
decodes the payload, it begins the assembly phase, where it rapidly
interprets the molecular schematic and constructs it atom by atom. It
also had a mode where it executed arbitrary instructions, step by
step. That mode was used to reconfigure the molecule, split it apart,
and make it do all kinds of crazy things, but more on that later.

First order of business was the construction of the first
generation of synthetic assemblers. I plugged my handmade
communication adapter into my computer and initiated the process.
Once they self-diagnosed and pinged the ready signal, I ordered
the organic ones to kill the bacteria and self-destruct.
You see, organic is dangerous. Things could go wrong at any point.
The host bacteria could mutate, and transcription errors were common.
The assemblers would be destroyed if they didn’t pass routine
diagnostics by other assemblers, and I took extra precautions with
the organic version, but who knows? It might mutate and decide it
wanted to live. Evolution is bad in that regard, and very
unpredictable.
Remember when I mentioned arbitrary instructions? Well, those do
serve a purpose. The assemblers could reconfigure themselves on
request. I designed them to be as modular as could be. You know how
carbon atoms can form fullerenes? Well, the assemblers were just as
versatile. They could form nanotubes and other allotropes just as
easy.
And so, I wrote more code and had them manufacture flagella,
molecular propellers, and what-have-you. They attached the new
appendages to their modular bodies and could now move with purpose.

Once the deed was done, I had the synthetic
assemblers migrate to a new environment and incinerated the original
culture.

The original culture numbered in the thousands, but
for what I wanted to do next I needed millions. I set it to reproduce
and went back to my normal routine. I was positively shaking as I
contemplated a grey-goo scenario, but I assured myself that this
would work.

A few days later, a forming mound of very fine dust
greeted me. I set down my sack of coal and got to work grinding it
down into dust.

***

“Hey dad! could you come down for a minute?” I
called out from the basement.

“One second!” I heard the reply.

A moment later my dad entered the basement.

“What’s up?” He asked.

“I just wanted to show you something!” I said,
unable to keep excitement from my voice.

“Okay. I’m here. What is it?”

I uncovered the object in the middle of the room with
a big smile.

“Holy shit! Is that diamond?” my father asked in
awe as he leaned in to inspect it.

“Damn right it is.”

“That means that you did it, son!” he exclaimed
and reached for a bear hug. I hugged him back.

“I sort of flopped it with this desk though.” I
said after a silent moment.

“Why?”

“I wanted to make a carbon-fibre desk for my
computer and this happened.”

“It’s a little odd that this one isn’t, that’s
all.”

He handed it back, I picked it up and turned to
leave.

“Thanks.”

“Uh… sure.”

I got the hint, and I felt mildly offended. I left
the store and went home.

***

It took longer than I expected to get rid of the
diamond desk and the diamond, but it was eventually done. I’d
programmed the assemblers with the ability to disassemble, which
makes the name ambiguous at best.

I vowed to never synthesise diamonds for profit
again. I’m being careless, I thought. I needed
to start small.

I needed the money for the raw materials, so I sat
there thinking, then it hit me.

I didn’t need money at all.

I spent some time working on the new code and
modifying the assembler, and that’s how the collectors were born.

The little machines did nothing more than seek a
certain material and haul it back to a certain point. If they went
too far or couldn’t get back, they self-destructed.

My prototypes worked great. They could seek target
molecules and atoms efficiently, but a large scale application would
prove difficult. I couldn’t use radio signals for this, it would be
insane. Coordinating the individual actions of billions of collectors
using radio was out of the question. I needed a better method for
communication.

I decided to study quantum mechanics in more depth,
and began experimenting with my creations.

***

The first couple of experiments were a complete
failure, then I made a breakthrough.

Using magnetostatic crystallite containment cages
that acted as atom traps, I managed to trap hydrogen atoms and push
them into one another. The process had a high chance of success.

Things had just got back on the right track. I’d
managed to develop a reliable procedure for entangling two particles.

***

“Hey Kat, what would you do if you had a machine
that could answer anything?” I asked my sister out of the blue.

Our relationship had improved after she found out
that I had actually ‘invented’ something. She was happy to see
father happy, and dad couldn’t have been happier ever since. It was
the best we’d seen him since mother died.

“Anything?” she pouted slightly as she asked.

“Anything.”

“I’d ask it why we’re here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… I’d ask it why we exist. Nobody told
us why when we were made.”

“God would disagree.”

“Oh, please.” Katherine said.

“You don’t believe in God? I took you for a
believer.” I asked in shock.

“It’s not that. God doesn’t tell you why you
were created, he just tells you how to live. The big DOs
and DO NOTs.
Do you believe in our lord and saviour?” she asked with a smirk.

“If you’re talking in biblical terms, then no. I
don’t.” I replied candidly.

“Then what do you believe in?”

“I believe in the Great Architect.”

“The what?”

“The Great Architect. If God exists then he’s the
greatest programmer and engineer to ever be.”

“Dear lord. Do you have to invent? Even in
religion?” she giggled.

“I’m not inventing anything, and it’s more of a
philosophical take than a religion.” I defended.

“Okay. I’m interested, tell me more.”

“The basic principle is this: where there’s a
program, there’s a programmer.”

“Oh, I see, and you think we’re programs?”

“No, I think we’re basic automata. The program is
reality.”

“So, you think that the universe is a simulation?”

“It has to be.”

“So, we’re like… living inside The Matrix?
There’s more to us outside the box?”

“Might be, or we could just be a part of the
simulation like everything else.”

“You do know that Stephen Hawking would disagree
with your theory?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Stephanie made me watch one of his videos where he
talks about how this universe is just one of an infinite number of
different universes.”

“Oh yes, I’ve watched that one. The Story of
Everything. You’re talking about the bit where he says that a grand
designer doesn’t have to exist, right?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s the one where he tells you to imagine an
ancient mechanism that churns out universes with different laws of
physics, and attributes our existence to that. The one where he says
that this universe is the only one where we can exist, right?”
I asked.

“I think so.”

“Well, he’s right about the last part, but we
have a name for such a mechanism in computing. One that explores all
possible outcomes in parallel.”

“What’s that?”

“A universal search algorithm. Levin Search. A
program.”

***

I needed a silent mode of communication. Something
that didn’t broadcast and receive. Something that two nanobots
could use to talk to each other.

Quantum entanglement hadn’t been proven useful for
communication. You could entangle two particles such as that when one
was measured, it would pick a state, and the other peer would
instantly be affected in the same way. That didn’t mean you could
use this for communication.

The No-communication theorem stated that it was
impossible to communicate information from one observer to another
while measuring the state of a particle.

I cheated. I didn’t measure it at all.

All communication ‘happened’ during
superposition. If observed, the transmissions simply stopped, but
every time the two systems simultaneously entered superposition,
something beautiful would happen: communication would take place.
When the wave function collapsed, any consequential actions were
carried out.

From the observer’s point of view, the system just
ticked.

This was of no use achieving faster-than-light
communications for practical uses, but it worked at the nano scale,
and my next step was using this technology to my advantage.

The next generation of assemblers had sixteen ports,
each housing a collector and a supercooled quantum-entangled
particle, and each collector housed a peer. This communication system
allowed the assemblers to request materials from the collectors
instantaneously, noiselessly, and directly.